


Within the walls, a crash of thunder

by akeenpeach (oneshinyapple)



Category: Johnny's Entertainment
Genre: AU, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-20 16:47:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6017167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneshinyapple/pseuds/akeenpeach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Assassins only have one way to go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Within the walls, a crash of thunder

i.  
  
Within the walls, there is a crash of thunder.  
  
It rattles the cups in the sink, the saucers on the kitchen table and the single framed photograph of a single purple flower, unfurling, that Kamenashi had taken. It sends a tremor through his body and into his very bones.  
  
If the same walls could only speak, it would tell a story of surprise and betrayal, of confusion and sorrow, of friendship and of loss.  
  
He stands alone in sea of blood, surrounded by what had once been his family. They had been a strange family, comprised only of the broken and the wounded. But they had staggered and fumbled their way for ten years together. Had scraped through life and made a living from the deaths of others.  
  
He wonders, as his strangely steady hands point the still smoking gun at his own temple, if this was the only ending that they could have had. He closes his eyes, takes a breath, and pulls the trigger.  
  
Within the walls, there is a crash of thunder.  
  
Outside, there is only rain.

 

  
ii.  
  
Jun was the first to die, and the easiest to kill. Sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea in an expensive robe, he didn’t know what hit him. The poor fool had been too preoccupied by his pleasure. He had always enjoyed the fine things – the _finest_ things – in life, an extravagance that everyone else had indulged him in, because he was, at least, generous. Though he lashed them all with his sharp tongue and quick wit, he had the softest heart.  
  
Maybe that was why he had chosen Jun to go first. Then again, perhaps Jun being first had only been a matter of convenience.  
  
It made no difference, either way, when the empty shell dropped to the floor and Jun’s body fell off his chair. At least he’s at peace. Broken no more.  
  


  
iii.  
  
Kamenashi was next -- bright, awkward Kamenashi. He was the one who had tried the hardest of all, who had prided himself on his perfect success rate, despite being the youngest. He hated being an assassin because he cared too deeply, always wound up researching his targets so well that he always ended up sympathetic toward them. But then, he also loved being an assassin, of being really good at what he did. He liked the challenge, the thrill, the adrenaline rush that always came whenever he managed to get away with a seemingly perfect crime.  
  
Kame saw Jun’s body, stepped in his blood. He had always been the most fragile of them all, despite that calm façade he kept. He certainly had a tragic past, if the nightmares that had woken him almost every night had been any indication.  
  
It was so easy to step behind him and pull the wire taut around his neck. Kame hardly even put up a fight, too stunned perhaps by the sight of Jun’s body.  
  
He died with his eyes on the photograph he’d taken, and slumped lifeless at his feet.  
  


  
iv.  
  
Yamashita and Jin, he knew, would have to die together. They had a job that day, one that had required them to lug some of their most expensive equipment out and into the van. It was impossible to catch them separately, anyway. They were almost always together – ate together, slept together (like brothers, not lovers), endlessly teased Kame together, and took all the difficult commissions that had multiple targets together. He wasn’t even sure they could function apart.  
  
He knew they would be tricky, because he could never understand them. They worked with their own special methods, using logic that no one else could follow and a system that always seemed so insane and unreliable, but which always, always worked.  
  
So he sat, waiting on the breakfast table, listening to the rain that had begun to fall outside, and it was careless and uncharacteristically stupid of him to forget to have a second gun. Because when Yamashita and Jin walked in, despite looking tired, grim, and soaked to the bone, they still moved so fast. They both drew their guns, even as his own wavered between them.  
  
“Nino…What did you _do_?” Yamashita asked, and his voice was both grief-stricken and furious.  
  
He started at the sound of his name, gun sweeping from Yamashita to Jin and back again. He could only kill one of them before the other could shoot him dead. His hand trembled. “I had to do it,” he heard himself whisper. “I had to do it for all your sakes.”  
  
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Jin demanded, his finger sliding toward the trigger.  
  
“This is not the way to live,” he said, and his voice sounded unexpectedly steady. “But it _is_ the best way to die.”  
  
Three fingers tightened around three triggers, and the house shook as it would have against a wave of thunder, deep in the heart of a storm.  
  


  
v.  
  
Nagase stands in a sea of blood, cigarette hanging precariously at the edge of his slightly open mouth. It’s only because he’s been in the force for fifteen years that he manages to keep his lunch inside him. Despite this, he can’t force his eyes to stay still, has to skim over the five young bodies on the floor. Four of the five have faces unmarred by wounds, and they look eerily beautiful and peaceful, even stained by the deep red of drying blood. Four of the five had been murdered, and the last one had killed himself in the messiest way possible.  
  
He takes a step forward, takes in the three guns in the room, and begins to reconstruct the events in his mind.  
  
“Nagase,” his partner’s voice calls, jolting him back to the present.  
  
Koichi is kneeling by one of the bodies. He looks up at Nagase with a steady, unfathomable gaze. “This one’s still alive.”


End file.
